Sunday, May 29, 2022

Apologetics,: Should We Worship on Saturaday or Sunday?

https://preparetoanswer.files.wordpress.com/2017/11/sabbath-1.jpg

Below is part of an email exchange I've had with a member of an Adventist group. Particularly a member of The World Wide Church of God . (Seventh Day Adventist fall with in this category too.)

Adventists, as most Protestants, tend to read the Bible without the context of history. They have very little, if any, knowledge of the ancient Church and early Christian history. They may know a lot about Jewish/Hebrew history but not Christian. There is over 2000 years of Christian history. But I am talking mainly about what is called the Apostolic Fathers-- the first 200 years of Christianity.  Detached from history, it is hard to have correct doctrine.

One thing I noticed about Adventist Protestants is they stress communal worship on Saturday--the Sabbath, and not Sunday as most Christians do. They think it is sinful to worship on Sunday and not Saturday as the Jews do.

How did the early Christians understand the theory of keeping communal  worshiping on Saturday?

"Therefore do not let anyone judge you by what you eat or drink, or with regard to a religious festival, a New Moon celebration or a Sabbath day."

In other words St. Paul is saying : ' Don't let anyone intimidate you into following the Jewish rituals about eating and drinking...nor their feast-days, nor their celebration of the SABBATH..


While it is true that there is no New Testament scripture : “Thou shalt change the day of thy worship and rest from Saturday to Sunday,”

There  is New Testament evidence that supports such a change by the Catholic Church.

Firstly there is biblical proof of the apostolic Church’s authority to teach in God’s name (Mt 16:18–19 Mt18:17–18, Lk 10:16) and of God’s guarantee that this teaching would never fall into error (Mt 28:20 Jn 16:13), and there is evidence from Scripture that Christ and the apostles changed the day of worship as a community from Saturday to Sunday.

The Old Testament Sabbath commandment contains two elements.
 
1) Primarily is the moral obligation to set aside communal time for  divine worship one that binds Christians as it does Jews, This could never be abrogated, as it is rooted in the natural law-- man must have one day for God to worship Him as a community.

2) Secondary was ceremonial and therefore could be changed. The word Sabbath (which means rest)
while usually on Saturday, could be any high feast day. And as St. Paul says above, these days have changed after being fulfilled in Jesus— they were abolished by Jesus’ death on the cross (Col 2:14) "having canceled the charge of our legal indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us; he has taken it away, nailing it to the cross"

This secondary, ceremonial element, which was a particular day to meet the moral obligation of communal worship, which was Saturday, so that the Jews would remember and memorialize the creation of the earth. 

Changing the "sabbath" to Sunday commemorates even a greater thing: a new creation by His death and resurrection. Sabbath comes from the word Shabbath which essentially,, means “a day of rest.” It was not just for Saturday but also for high feast-days.
See link  

Jesus, during his earthly ministry, began to prepare the way for changing Sabbath worship from “the letter of the law” to “the spirit of the law.” Remember that one of his greatest arguments with the Pharisees concerned Sabbath worship.

He constantly rebuked them for placing the rigid observance of mere details above the spirit of setting aside a day to rest from unnecessary servile work and to worship God. (Mk 7:13)  "Thus you nullify the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down. And you do many things like that.”

By this Jesus made it clear that the Sabbath may be changed to meet the needs of man. (Mark 2:27- 28)   "
Then he said to them, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. So the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.”

Special honor is shown to Sunday throughout the New Testament.

1. Christ rose from the dead on Sunday: (
Mark 16:9)"When Jesus rose early on the first day of the week, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene, out of whom he had driven seven demons."

2. He first appeared to his disciples that Easter Sunday evening (Jn 20:19).
On the evening of that first day of the week, when the disciples were together, with the doors locked for fear of the Jewish leaders, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!”

  3. One week later—and from the context we can see that this meant the following Sunday—Jesus appeared to them again when Thomas was present (John 20:26).

4. Luke records that Sunday was observed by the Christian community from the very beginning: “On the of the
 first day week when we gathered to break bread” (Acts 20:7). To “break bread” is the ancient term for the celebration of the Eucharist, ie. Holy Mass (Mt 26:26, Mk 14:22).

5. Paul ordered the Corinthians to gather their offertory collections on Sunday (1 Cor 16:2)On the first day of every week, each one of you should set aside a sum of money in keeping with your income, saving it up, so that when I come no collections will have to be made. Catholics still follow this scriptural tradition on Sunday during Mass.

6. John records in Rev. 1:10 "On the Lord’s Day I was in the Spirit, and I heard behind me a loud voice like a trumpet

You only take scripture for your beliefs, but historical documentation can help us to understand scripture better. The scripture I gave above does have a historical context that I think is convincing for my case.

So what I quote below is NOT scripture. I do not accept them like that. But they are reliable historical documents from the first or second century of what the Christians then believed. Since they were closer to the time of the resurrection, I would think they would be more accurate than someone today.

Historically
7.  "The Lord's Day" was also an ancient Christian term for Sunday. 
The Didache
-- 50 AD, written about 20 years after the Resurrection) or also known as The Lord's Teaching Through the Twelve Apostles to the Nations, [link] is considered an ancient reliable text of the practices of ancient faithful Christians.  It says :
14:1 "And on the Lord's own day gather yourselves together and break bread and give thanks, first confessing your transgressions, that your sacrifice may be pure."
 
St. Ignatius of Antioch, who was taught by St. John the Apostle (born in Syria, around the year 50; died at Rome between 98 and 117 AD-- about 80 years after the resurrection, so his recollection of the resurrection would be like to us someone who remembers WWII)

He wrote letters to Christians on his way to martyrdom, and
 tells us in his Letter to the Magnesians [linkthat “the Lord’s day” is not the ancient Sabbath; therefore, “the Lord’s day” must refer to Sunday:

9:1 "If then those who had walked in ancient
practices attained unto newness of hope, no longer
observing sabbaths but fashioning their lives after
the Lord's day, on which our life also arose through
Him"

St. Justin Martyr died about 165 AD
In his  "First Apology,"  his defense for being a Christian before his martyrdom.  Since he is speaking to Roman Pagans he comes out and says Christians worship together of Sunday:

 "And on the day called Sunday, all who live in cities or in the country gather together to one place, and the memoirs of the apostles or the writings of the prophets are read,[Readings] as long as time permits; then, when the reader has ceased, the president verbally instructs, and exhorts to the imitation of these good things.[Sermon] Then we all rise together and pray, and, as we before said, when our prayer is ended,[Creed] bread and wine and water are brought, and the president [priest] in like manner offers prayers and thanksgivings, according to his ability, [Last Supper Prayer] and the people assent, saying Amen; and there is a distribution to each, and a participation of that over which thanks have been given, [ communion] and to those who are absent a portion is sent by the deacons"  

It is a basic description of Catholic Mass. I put in our present terms in brackets above. The "president" being the priest. Terms in the early part of Christianity were not as clear as they are now. The word priest is derived from the word presbyter.

So From Scripture and history it is clear that Christians worshiped together on Sunday from the beginning of Christianity. It has only become a controversy in the past hundred years. You are putting trust in a man made tradition and excluding history to help understand the Bible, when common sense should suggest to us that knowledge of ancient Christianity should help us understand what was believed always and everywhere.

No comments:

Post a Comment

A PROTESTANT HISTORIAN CONVERTS TO THE CATHOLIC CHURCH

  A. David Anders, PhD Protestant Historian I grew up an Evangelical Protestant in Birmingham, Alabama. My parents were loving and devoted, ...